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Thanks to James Smithson, an eccentric Englishman, the Smithsonian museum was willed to the US in 1829 to create a ‘diffusion of knowledge'. There’s nothing quite like it, a collection of 19 artifact-filled museums, lined up in a row along the Mall. The National Air and Space Museum, National Museum of Natural History, National Museum of American History, and Freer-Sackler Museums of Asian Art are always free.

Alongside them, Washington’s monuments honor the beauty and the horror of the past. They’re symbols of the American story, from the inspiring Lincoln Memorial to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Martin Luther King Memorial.